Batteries

Texaco Inc. and Energy Conversion Devices Inc. plan to mass-produce nickel metal hydride car batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles. The companies say nickel metal hydride batteries have twice the power and four times the life of regular lead acid car batteries. Made mostly of hydrogen and nickel, the batteries are "completely recyclable," said Bill Wicker, senior vice president of Texaco.

Duracell Inc. announced Thursday that it is recalling two models of lithium camera batteries because of an assembly defect that can cause severe overheating and in some cases damage cameras. The batteries affected by the recall include all Duracell XL Lithium camera batteries with the model number DL123A or DL223A and labeled "Made in USA." The DL123A is a three-volt specialty battery, while the DL223A is a six-volt specialty battery.

Spurred by their growing infatuation with electronic toys and games, hobby equipment and gadgets, Americans spend some $2.3 billion each year for batteries, according to a report from a marketing communications concern. Paradoxically, according to the New York-based Howard Marlboro Group, while electronic technological advances have accelerated battery sales, consumers do not buy their batteries in stores that sell electronic equipment.

Gillette Co. on Wednesday unveiled Duracell Ultra alkaline batteries, designed to meet the power demands of high-tech electronic devices. The AA- and AAA-size Duracell Ultra batteries will last 50% longer than ordinary alkaline batteries, Gillette said. The Ultra, which will be shipped beginning in May, will be priced 20% higher than the current Duracell alkaline batteries. In the U.S., a Duracell Ultra AA four-pack will be priced at about $4.99.

NASA on Sunday installed a new power unit in the space shuttle Discovery and began recharging the batteries of the Hubble Space Telescope. Discovery is scheduled to lift off with the $1.5-billion telescope on April 25. "Right now everything seems to be in the bag for a week from Wednesday," said George Diller, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Technicians on Saturday took out a faulty auxiliary power unit that forced a scrub of Discovery's launching last Tuesday.

Chances are the same kind of battery that twice caught fire in Boeing 787 Dreamliners in recent weeks is in your pocket at this very moment. Lithium ion batteries, small and powerful, have become the electricity storage device of choice. They are everywhere -- in cellular phones, laptops, power tools, even cars. They allow us to talk, email and drill longer than ever possible in the past. But the incidents that led to the grounding of the 787 fleet worldwide, and the decision by Boeing on Friday to temporarily halt all deliveries of the plane, have highlighted a troubling downside of these energy-dense dynamos: their tendency to occasionally burst into flames.

Question: I own a construction truck that because of rain or work stoppages has to be inoperative for several weeks to as long as three or four months. After the last shutdown, all four of the batteries had to be replaced. How do I best protect batteries during lengthy shutdowns?--A.F. Answer: The best protection probably involves more fussing around than you can accept.

Space shuttle Atlantis' astronauts completed the most important work of their repair mission to the international space station Wednesday, replacing a fourth and final dying battery in the Russian control module. American Susan Helms and Russian Yuri Usachev finished the job ahead of schedule Wednesday evening. All that remained was for the units to be charged and tested by ground controllers to restore the space station to full electrical power.

A little-known battery technology developed by a controversial suburban Detroit firm is expected today to win the first contract awarded by the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium, a government-industry group working on batteries for electric cars. The $18.5-million development contract to be given Energy Conversion Devices Inc. appears to place the nickel-metal hydride battery at the forefront in the race to become the battery technology of choice for electric cars in the mid-1990s.

Photovoltaic cells that convert 31% of the energy in sunlight into electricity have been developed by researchers at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. The rate is the highest ever recorded for solar cells and is about 50% higher than the efficiency of commercial solar cells, which are 18% to 20% efficient. The cells were produced by combining gallium arsenide cells produced by Varian Associates Inc. of Palo Alto, and crystalline silicon cells produced at Stanford University.